Soroptimist International Bath and District

Immediate Past President Diane handed over the Chain of Office to newly appointed President Jenny at our AGM.  President Jenny then gave a a welcoming speech to the attending members and said that she was looking forward to the year ahead and not only working toegther to improve lives of women and girls but also enjoying each other’s company within the club.

We wish her a fulfilling year ahead.

Some of our club members filled plastic bottles with unrecyclable plastic which will be sent to places like Africa to be used for the construction industry or even making playpark activity structures.  It’s a clever way of keeping plastics out of landfill.  Check out ecobricks.org to find out more.

Members from our club attended a special showing of a film called ‘Pad Man’ which was a fundraiser set up by Kathryn Crosweller who runs womenandgirls.org.com which provides eco-friendly sanitary wear to girls and women in India.

The film was about a Indian man who invented a sanitary towel machine and how it has helped thousands of women and girls throughout India. Kathryn has set up her own charity which makes eco friendly sanitary wear which can be reused up to 2 years. Each pad costs £5 and can be washed even in dirty water but remains hygienic due to its special properties.

The evening raised enough money to give much needed sanitary wear for 100 girls.

We had 2 lovely ladies from Julian House visit our meeting on Wednesday evening to update us on the progress that they are making as regards their charity and the steps being taken at the Women’s Refuge which they now run as well as all the other good things they do.

Our club supports Julian House in many ways and we hope to continue to liaise with them in the future.

Our club came up with the idea of doing a Science, Engineering and Computing day in conjunction with Bath College.  Bath College set up the day and brought in representatives from construction companies teaming up with college tutors to do workshops with a local girl’s school.

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Rachel Bell from Stride Treglown ( Architects) gave an introduction to the day and then the workshops began from constructing bridges made out of straws, paper and then coding a ‘Mars Rover’ to move around on a specific board.

We even had a try on of the latest Eksovest which is the only one in the country being tried out.

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It was very inspiring and encouraging to see these girls take part and for them to see science in a very different adn fun way. We hope that it has inspired them to take up more STEM subjects. in the future.

We were delighted to present a cheque for £200 to Wiltshire Air Ambulance.  We were also given a guided tour around the station and able to see inside the helicopter and also the operations room where all the information is gathered.  It is very impressive and gives an insight to the valuable work that the charity does.